Here’s How Analysts Reacted to Greece’s Vote Of Confidence

Via Reuters: Wall Street confused by this latest act of political treachery by G-Pap who had promised to collaborate with the New Democracy opposition only to back out in the last minute (just as he backed out of his promise for a referendum) and end up in a coalition government with the socialists and the far right? You betcha. Courtesy of Reuters, here is the knee jerk reaction by so called experts who see this as either bullish or bearish. The bottom line is that until G-Pap actually does something he has previously promised to do, he will continue to lie and cheat in order to simply remain in power and soak up Eu

MICHAEL WOOLFOLK, SENIOR CURRENCY STRATEGIST, BNY MELLON, NEW YORK

“We could see a small relief rally from this but I would not expect it to be too large. There’s still questions about whether people will live with these austerity measures. More broadly, the issue of whether or not the euro zone will be a political or economic union is still being put off. If the latter, membership is a privilege, not a right.”

“With the confidence vote given to the Papandreou government, we end the week on new possibilities rather than a can of worms when the oil market comes back on Monday. We start next week on a position of strength, whether Greece has a unity government or a new person in charge. Markets will build on this sliver of strength although they are still a long way from getting out of the woods. But the confidence vote ends the week on a positive note.”

“I think it will definitely add inertia to the attempts to get Greece back on track in terms of implementing the kind of austerity that will be essential for this thing to work. It will help (markets) on Monday but like everything else involving the euro zone it is a series of incremental steps.”

“Even though he has won the vote, he engaged in a game of brinkmanship. He proposed a referendum and then had to retract it and is barely managing to produce majorities in parliament. All that means to me is that his days in power are numbered. There is a lack of legitimacy at this point even though he won the vote. At least, though, the worst has been avoided, where no new government was formed and Greece gets pushed into default. So at least we’re back to where we were before. So at the margin, it’s positive. But I don’t think the market will rally too much on this. Don’t expect a huge relief rally.”

THOMAS ROTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR IN U.S. GOVERNMENT BOND TRADING, MITSUBISHI UFJ SECURITIES USA, NEW YORK

“It takes the risk off the table. It takes away the risk of a referendum (on the euro zone bailout) or renegotiating new terms. Net-net it’s a ‘risk-on’ event. How much you can rally on this? It may be temporary at best. You have still have a lot of risks like Italy (NYSE:EWI). We just don’t know. We have (Treasuries) supply next week so that’s a factor. We could see Treasuries trade off a little. All in all, it’s a slight positive for stocks and a slight negative for bonds.”